With two of its founding partners breaking off, including one who is bringing a 12-lawyer group to Duane Morris, New Jersey law firm McCusker, Anselmi, Rosen & Carvelli is re-forming.

The Florham Park-based firm as of Monday is rebranding as Anselmi & Carvelli, while founding partner John McCusker is leading the 12-lawyer group to the Newark office of Duane Morris. [...]

With this move, Philadelphia-born Duane Morris is nearly doubling its head count in Newark to 28 practicing lawyers from 16. Firm leaders said the move bolstered the more than 700-lawyer firm’s depth in complex commercial litigation in the employment and environmental arenas. 

“Taken together, this group adds new skill sets and client relationships to our Newark office and adds range to our employment and environmental capabilities,” said chairman and CEO Matt Taylor in a statement.

Joining the firm’s trial practice group are partners McCusker, Alicyn Craig, Rosemarie DaSilva, Kathleen A. Hirce and Alice M. Shanahan; special counsel Catherine C. Lopez and Suzanne M. Murphy and associates Michael Camastra, Louis Formisano and Allison N. Zsamba.

Meanwhile, Michael R. Futterman and Patrice E. LeTourneau are joining the firm’s employment, labor, benefits and immigration group, Duane Morris said. The team is joined by two legal assistants and one paralegal from McCusker Anselmi.

David Sussman, managing partner of Duane Morris’ Newark office, said the group fills out two of the industry groups—energy and life sciences—that are part of 14 that the firm has put at the center of its strategic growth plan.

“It is a Duane Morris strategic initiative to develop strengths in core industries; energy and life sciences are two of those,” Sussman said in an interview Monday. Which areas of practice the attorneys practice in are not the “first and foremost” concerns of firm leaders compared to which industries they represent, Sussman said.

“This addition gives us a credible group of employment and environmental lawyers in the energy space and in the pharmaceutical space that we didn’t have before,” Sussman said. “We expect that the 12 lawyers who just joined our firm will continue to grow a national practice from Newark.”

Sussman said the group has a history of sharing work with Fortune 500 companies with Duane Morris, during which time the global firm’s leaders developed a respect for the smaller firm’s attorneys. [...]

Reprinted with permission from New Jersey Law Journal, © ALM Media Properties LLC. All rights reserved.